


Tension

by mistr3ssquickly



Series: Redemption [7]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, I was aiming for smut and got philosophy instead, Lots of plot happening here, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 13:17:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10945296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistr3ssquickly/pseuds/mistr3ssquickly
Summary: Leia returns to Tatooine with Luke and Han and can tell immediately that something is wrong.





	Tension

**Author's Note:**

> I’m playing fast and loose with EU canon in this story, so please take it as a canon divergence if you know how things happen in other stories. And maybe the prequels, too -- still haven’t rewatched those. So I suppose what I’m saying is that I’m sticking to the orig-trig canon only. :)

The dread of returning to Tatooine doesn't fully hit until Han drops the _Falcon_ out of lightspeed and begins their descent into Tatooine's atmosphere, the burnt copper hue of the endless sands stretched between the jagged outcroppings and unforgiving canyons as familiar to Leia as the tightness twisting in her belly, memory and conjecture mixing into a toxic swell of adrenaline under her skin. She focuses on the cadence of her breathing and keeps her expression impassive, her posture straight, controlled, an act that would likely fool most sentients, but Chewbacca knows her too well and can smell her fear, besides, his concerned grumble drawing Han’s attention away from the spaceport at which he's chosen to dock the _Falcon,_ his face set in a frown as he considers her.

“Want a shot to help take the edge off?” he says when she raises an eyebrow at him, challenging him to say something stupid and give her an outlet for the stress she's been steadfastly ignoring.

She shakes her head, Chewbacca rumbling something that makes Han swat at him, bitching about Chewbacca's tendency to be overprotective where she and Luke are concerned.

He puts his arm around her as they descend the gangplank, though, keeping her close despite the crushing heat shimmering around them, a comfort despite the sweat she can feel gathering against her skin. “Hotter’n the fifth hell’a Moraband here,” he says by way of greeting to Luke when the younger man meets them half a minute later, his hair plastered to his forehead already with sweat as he removes his protective gear and squints into the crimson glow of the first sun setting at the far horizon.

“It’s the start of the summer season,” he says, “but it’ll only last a few weeks. Then the temperatures drop a little.”

Han chuckles softly, squeezing Leia’s shoulder as he does. “Leave it to you to think that’ll make a damn bit’a difference,” he says, “farmboy. But hey, not like I was payin’ attention to the seasons from where I was sittin’ last time I was here. This’s better. Feels like I’m bein’ roasted, but I’ll take it over the alternative.”

A shadow passes over Luke’s features, lightning-quick, but the emotions that resonate beneath the surface, sharp and unfiltered, touch the ache Leia feels in her chest, twining the memory of worry and anger and desperation with the renewed sense of regret and resentment and pain. She shifts her weight to rest more of her body against Han’s, the solid warmth of him at her side a comfort, a reminder that he’s all right, that he’s safely back with them. That their tormentors are dead, gone. Never coming back to hurt any of them again.

“I imagine we’ll all be more comfortable inside,” she says, pleased to see Luke’s eyes light up at the offered escape from their current conversation.

“Should be,” Luke says. “I got us a room not too far from here. It’s on the outside of town, but it has thick walls and modern cooling systems. I think we’ll be comfortable there.”

“I’m likin’ the sound’a that,” Han says, dropping his hand from Leia’s shoulders, the loss of added body heat almost as satisfying as a drink of cool water. “You need help movin’ our guest, or did you get him settled already?”

Luke shakes his head, calm as anything, but he’s sealed himself off, the white-noise silence washing in like the sands brushing fretfully against the toes of Leia’s boots as she reaches for him, trying -- and failing -- to sense him, to feel him as she’s done unconsciously for the years they’ve known one another. “His medical systems are all installed aboard the ship Lando arranged for him,” he says, “and I’m not comfortable trying to transfer them to a rented room. I spoke with him about it on the flight here, and we agreed it’d be better if he stayed in his ship. For now, anyway. Safer, too.”

“If you say so,” Han says, shrugging and falling into step behind Luke, giving the back of Luke’s neck a squeeze as he does, a common gesture Leia’s seen between them a hundred times. She waits for the usual swell of affection from Luke in response to Han’s touch, but there’s nothing, Luke’s control technique on full display, as impenetrable as it is maddening.

She stays quiet about it while Luke shows them their accommodations, the flat he’s rented considerably nicer and spacious and more modern than Obi-Wan’s hut in the Wastes, the air inside cool and refreshing after the heat of late afternoon, but the minute Han leaves them, off to confer with Chewbacca before the wookiee leaves in the _Falcon,_ she corners Luke, wrapping her hand around his wrist, hoping to feel _something_ from him once they’re in physical contact, any hint at all of the connection they’ve shared.

Nothing.

“You’re acting strangely again,” she says without prelude when Luke says her name like a question. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Luke sighs and twists his hand experimentally, testing her grip. Leia tightens her fingers around his wrist. “It’s nothing,” Luke says. His expression softens into one of his lopsided smiles, making him look younger, more like the boy she remembers coming to her aid on the _Death Star,_ the young man she fell in love with at some point over the last three years. “And everything. Coming back here is hard.”

Leia’s chest tightens. “I know,” she says.

“And there’s so much to do. I’m not sure I’ll be able to -- to do everything we need to do.”

“Well, you’ll not be doing it alone,” Leia says, releasing his wrist and resting her hands on his sides, holding his gaze without blinking when he looks down at her. “We’ll see it through, all of us. We’ve managed more impossible feats together.”

 _That_ earns her a full smile, Luke dipping his head down to kiss her on the nose. “Thank you,” he says.

She closes her eyes when he leans in to kiss her on the mouth, the faintest flicker of their connection igniting between them, as much a comfort as the feel of his hands on her back, the warmth of his forehead resting against hers.

“We should rest tonight,” he says, his eyes closed and voice soft, intimate in the small space between them. “We have so much to do.”

“Mm. We should,” she agrees, stealing one last kiss before her sense of duty catches up to her, compelling her away from Luke’s embrace and going through the evening routine smoothed into familiarity from their months together on Tatooine.

She’s not yet asleep when Luke slides onto mattress beside her, not quite close enough to be in physical contact with her but near enough to be noticeable, his presence bright and vibrant, brushing against her senses. He curls his body loosely against her back after a moment’s hesitation and drapes his arm over her belly, settling into motionlessness almost immediately save for the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, seeking comfort in the nothingness of sleep, a behavior he’s had as long as Leia’s known him, probably longer. He’s not sealed himself off from her quite as thoroughly as he’s done since their arrival on Tatooine, his comfort at her closeness at odds with the weight of responsibility pulling at him, consciousness persisting even as he evens his breathing, focusing just as he does when he meditates, as he’s taught her to do in their exercises together. She feels blindly for his hand, curled on the mattress before her, and laces their fingers together, matching her breathing to his, the focus of it calming, comforting.

Sleep is slow to take her, all the same, and it’s laced with nightmares when it does, filled with blurred shapes and screaming voices, her stomach twisted around itself when she finally surfaces out of them to consciousness, breathing hard and aching with adrenaline, her skin hot with it when Luke says her name and Han reaches out to touch her, his presence jarring to her, unexpected.

“Y’all’right?” he slurs, his words thick with sleep, and she’s not, not even a little, but she tells him that she is and settles down against his side, the rhythm of his heartbeat a comfort as much as Luke’s presence stretched out on his back beside her, awake and vigilant in the darkness.

She wakes again, bare hours later, to another night terror. And again after that, just before the first sun has crested the horizon, each time to a dream different than the others but no less terrifying for it, her throat aching when she wakes, her eyes hot with tears. Frustrated, she slips from their bed and leaves the darkness of the bedroom, pulling her cloak from the hook by the door as she goes, the chill of the desert evening not yet dispelled by the harsh attentions of the twin suns welcome against the sweat-hot skin of her face, chasing away the last remnants of sleep.

She doesn’t go far, walking more for the sake of walking than anything else, but Luke joins her not two minutes later with his brow furrowed in concern, his tunic hanging crooked where he’s obviously dressed in a hurry, his lightsaber tucked into the sash around his waist, not clipped to it as he usually prefers to wear it. Still uncomfortable with her being outside alone on Tatooine, despite the months she’s spent there with him in the past, despite the vast amount of knowledge she’s gained over that time, the opportunities she’s had to demonstrate her knowledge of how to safely navigate the different territories, of the venomous wildlife to avoid, the signs of dangerous nomadic groups roaming nearby. All the same, she slows her pace to allow him to catch up to her, too weary from her broken sleep to remind him that she’s not some delicate weakling in need of his protection, pleased when his expression softens, warmth in his eyes as he falls into step beside her, leaving the quiet stillness of the morning unbroken.

They walk to a rocky outcropping not far from their cluster of dwellings and sit side-by-side, Luke settling across from Leia when she sits and folds her legs into a crisscross before her, his knees not touching hers but close enough that she can sense him, his presence as always brighter to her than anyone else when he isn’t shielding himself from her. She closes her eyes and draws a deep breath, the dry bitterness of the desert air heavy in her lungs, bringing to the fore of her thoughts memories she’s struggled to ignore, to bury deep in her subconscious, their poison bleeding across her thoughts, echoing the terror she felt as she slept. Nothing like the sweet memories of Tatooine she usually tries to remember whenever other memories creep in too forcefully, of the stolen moments of love and affection with the young man seated at her side.

“Let it come,” Luke says, his voice rippling across the still silence between them when Leia starts to push the bad memories away. She cracks one eye at him just in time to see him moving, reaching out to rest his organic hand atop hers, the contact little more than a gesture of comfort, in no way dulling the ache in her chest. “Recognize what you’re feeling. Name it. Take away its power, claim it as your own. Control it.”

Leia closes her eyes and does her best to follow his instructions, just as she’s done every time he’s walked her through the exercises his masters taught him, showing her what he’s learned, the power he draws from it. She reluctantly allows the memory of her nightmares to come forward, the agony of it muted to the point of bearability under the reality of wakefulness, the phantoms born of trauma easier to recognize in the cool twilight, their power lessened by it. Less so the anxieties surrounding their current endeavors, the research she’s done into the slave-trade in the cities nearest them bringing back memories on which she _refuses_ to dwell, no matter Luke’s gentle insistence to the contrary, the urgency she feels laid impotent by the reality of politics, of the dangers presented by changing too much too quickly, no foundation laid on which to build a better, safer world.

“Stretch out with that,” Luke says, just as her frustrations are beginning to crest, her heart-rate rising with it like the tide. “See what you can see through it.”

Leia frowns, reaching along the stretched bands of frustration and anger and fear as if smoothing her hands down a wrinkled cloth, her consciousness spreading, bleeding across the night-cooled sands, across the desert creatures moving unseen among the rocks and sparse, ragged plant-life, through the murmured consciousness of the sentients populating the cluster of dwellings beyond. She can feel Han, asleep still but not deeply so, the dreams drifting across his consciousness little more than wisps of color and sound, the absence of his bed-fellows kindling in him a sense of discontent. Beyond, close but removed, safe, she can feel the Jedi, awake and meditating, reaching out to her, his consciousness brushing hers with curiosity and restraint, resentment and anger humming beneath, like water beneath bedrock.

“Focus,” Luke says when she reaches along the Jedi’s touch, her curiosity mirroring his. “Touch, but don’t push.”

Leia opens her eyes. “I’d like to meet him,” she says, careful to keep her tone even, nonaggressive. Luke frowns, opening his mouth on an excuse she’s disinterested in hearing, so she adds: “I suspect he would like to meet me as well.”

Luke exhales slowly, setting his shoulders back as he does. “I -- yes, you’re probably right,” he says. “He’s -- concerned about you. As am I. Your nightmares --”

“I’ve had nightmares since I was a child,” Leia says, “worse since I joined the Rebellion, long before you knew me. It’s nothing I can’t handle. You know that as well as anyone. Better than, probably, save for Han.”

“Yes,” Luke says, “but --”

Leia turns her hand so that she can wrap it around Luke’s fingers. “When I need you to worry about me,” she says, “I promise I will let you know.”

The corner of Luke’s mouth twitches. “That won’t stop me from worrying anyway,” he tells her.

“No, I don’t expect it will,” she agrees. She takes a deep breath and releases it on a sigh, looking around them, the sands bathed deep lilac in the light of the first sun cresting the mountains. “We should go back. We have work to do.”

Luke nods and releases her hand, clearly reluctant to do as she says, for all that he stands and brushes the sand and dust from his trousers, clipping his lightsaber properly to his belt as they retrace their steps back to their flat. He leaves it there even after they’ve come inside, distracted and thrumming with nervous energy as Leia settles at the table in the main room to continue the reading she abandoned the night before when her eyes stopped focusing properly. He’s planning to leave, she can tell, to spend his morning with his rescued Jedi, his reluctance to just _go_ bothering her, distracting her from her thoughts.

“You would be wise to go check on your Jedi now while it’s cool, still, wouldn’t you?” she says when Luke actually starts pacing, his footfalls barely audible on the bare floor. “He’s not sleeping still, as I’m sure you could tell.”

“No, he’s -- I didn’t think you’d be able to -- yes. Yes, you’re right.”

Leia swallows a sigh. “I’ll tell Han where you’ve gone,” she says. “Keep your comlink on. We’ll contact you if you’re needed here.”

Luke nods and crosses the room to kiss her, lingering just a moment before turning and slipping back out into the heat seeping already into the dry morning air, her sense for him fragile and dim, like the sound turned down low on a holo. Hiding himself like one of the thousands of creatures native to his homeworld, blending into the deadly environment around him, concealed from the threats lurking in every shadow.

He’s safer that way, as safe as he can possibly be, so Leia pushes her worries from her mind and concentrates on the work spread out before her, drawing out four different possibilities for the first move of their campaign by the time Han’s woken and joined her in the main room, sleep-groggy and grumpy for it, drowning himself in a cup of the strong, bitter kaffin common on Outer Rim worlds as he watches her work.

“Luke head out already?” he wants to know halfway into his first cup, blinking at the empty room beyond them like the stimulants have finally hit his system well enough for him to notice something’s missing.

“Yes. Better to go while it’s cool,” Leia says without looking up from her work.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Mm.”

The next day passes almost the same as the first, and the day after that as well, the monotony of their first full week planetside bleeding monotony into the second, Leia’s strategy and preparatory work and Luke’s concern for his Jedi superseding meditation and practice with the Force after the second morning. Han’s agitation grows with each day that passes without any action, his patience for planning as thin as ever, his tendency to snap at her, at Luke, increasing until she’s had enough and drags him to bed midday on their tenth day planetside, fucking him with all the pent-up frustration and tension she’s carried with her since their arrival on Tatooine, his touch rougher than usual in response, as satisfying as a fist-fight, the sloppy, stupid grin on his face when he kisses her afterwards, the both of them sweaty and messy, almost as gratifying as the soreness between her legs when she climbs out of bed to clean up and return to her work.

“I was startin’ to think you’d lost interest in that kind’a thing,” he says, settling into a sprawl at her side, grinning and pleased in the way he gets only after they’ve slept together. “Been a while.”

It’s been two weeks on Tatooine, the week before that on Socorro. Three weeks leading up to the battle on Endor’s moon. Six months apart while Han was with the Hutt; the few tense, awful days on Bespin before that. Feels longer, by years, since their long, featureless days together on the _Falcon,_ the time passed between them in the slowness of sub-hyperspace travel a precious memory Leia has tucked away, deep in her heart.

“It has,” she says, without looking up from the timeline she’s been working on.

Han reaches across the table to rest his hand on her forearm. “Missed it,” he says.

Leia pauses, turning to take in the rare sincerity in Han’s expression, his brow furrowed with it, always more hesitant to be gentle than to jump head-first into a fire-fight, unsure of himself in a way he isn’t in any other aspect of his life. “I have, too,” she tells him. “I’ve wanted to. With you, and with Luke, but --”

She gestures, the words drying up in her mouth, the memory of unwanted touch in the cold darkness of Jabba’s palace asserting itself across her mind, of the predatory stares raking over her skin, growing in intensity as she was chained and collared, barely clad in garments that pinched and bruised her skin, with the only promise of relief coming in the form of violation Jabba described to her in morbid, awful detail, his thrill manic at the prospect of destroying her body, of _using_ her as though she were little more than an object, a possession to be abused and broken and discarded. She shakes her head and crosses her legs, returning her attention to the datapad in front of her, Han’s concern pressing against her mind as she does, tinged with morbid curiosity balanced with a self-preserving desire to not know, the safety of ignorance better than the pain of knowledge.

“Faster we get off’a this gods-forsaken rock, the better,” he says, finally, taking his hand from her arm and leaning back.

“I’m working on it,” she tells him.

“Yeah, I can see that. If you need any help with it, I ain’t got much else better to do.”

She laughs despite herself, returning her attention to her work. “Thank you.”

Han grumbles something she doesn’t catch and doesn’t ask him to repeat, his leg bouncing with restrained energy as he sits at her side. He pushes his chair back after a few minutes and stalks around the flat for a minute or two. Goes over to the door and pulls on his boots a minute after that, doesn’t say anything before he leaves, but he’s taken his comlink with him, both of his blasters missing from the shelf near the bed, which means he’s planning to be out for a while, probably gone off to distract himself at one of the gambling halls popular across cities on Tatooine, to drink away the hours left before Luke comes back for the night, Chewbacca’s absence from their little family group making plain all the ways in which she and Han are incompatible, unable to exist peacefully in the same room for any length of time with their clothes on.

She’s worked herself into a headache by the time he returns, the rose of the light bleeding around the heavy curtains at the far end of the flat suggesting that the first sun has half-set, its twin sinking towards the horizon; another day gone, spent in the confines of their rented rooms. Han has, as she suspected, been drinking, his gait loose with it, shirt unbuttoned further down than usual and skin sun-darkened and glossed with sweat from hours spent exposed to the raw heat of the planet. He greets her in passing, only pausing long enough to shuck off his boots and drop his gun-belt onto one of the crates near the doorway before disappearing into the ‘fresher, the sound of him bumping into things as he bathes speaking to the amount of alcohol he’s consumed. He pours himself a mug of water once he’s dressed and joined her once again at the table, rubbing at his temple like he’s got a headache to match hers, his eyes narrowed at the notes she’s made as if he or anyone else could possibly _dream_ of making sense of them in their current, jumbled state, strategies drawn and redrawn and tweaked more times than she can count.

“You do anything other than this today?” he says, squinting up at her.

She meditated after her afternoon meal, more to clear her thoughts than to pursue any of the exercises Luke has taught her. Walked around their compound twice when meditation served only to make her feel sleepy, the punishing heat of midday making the cool quiet of their flat seem more a refuge from the elements and less the prison it’s felt like more and more over the past days. “There is some urgency to our progress here,” she tells Han, instead. “Things may not change here as quickly as they do on other worlds, but they _do_ change, and if our plans are to be successful --”

Han waves it away. “Yeah, yeah, duty and responsibility. Your life’s breath, I know.” He leans back, his chair creaking in protest, and drinks some of his water. “I made some friends today, while you were workin’ on strategy. Lost more credits than I’ll ever win back, even if I live to be a thousand, but I made some friends.”

“Good for you,” Leia says.

Han grins, leaning into her personal space. “Got some intel from ‘em that’s worth more’n my credits, though. In the process’a establishing our friendship.”

Leia lifts an eyebrow at him. “Really.”

“Yup. Really. If you’re interested.”

“Asking questions to which you already know the answers isn’t a good look for you,” she tells him, pulling one of her legs up to rest her ankle on the opposite thigh, an unladylike posture that feels amazing where her hip has gone stiff over the hours she’s been seated at the table, working. “What did you learn?”

Han grins at her. “Get ready to take notes,” he said. “It ain’t trivial.”

He’s not wrong about that, the intel he’s gathered from local buyers detailed and disgusting and invaluable in equal measure, the gaps in her strategy slowly filling in as Han talks, his stories growing ever more colorful in response to her attention, his love of being able to shock her and Luke with his exploits in no way dulled over the years. By the time he’s finished, his voice has gone hoarse, but he looks pleased with himself, leaning on the table like a felinx expecting a pat on the head.

“They told you so much,” Leia says, frowning at the notes she’s made instead of giving him the praise he’s clearly seeking and probably, at least in part, deserves. “Are you sure you’re not being misled? Deceived?”

“I ain’t a novice at this, y’know,” Han grumbles, sitting back, his self-satisfied smirk deflating into a frown. “I’d know if they were bluffing. Part’a the reason you ask around when there’s gambling goin’ on. Get to learn everyone’s tells that way, see what they look like when they’re lyin’, what they look like when they’re tellin’ the truth.”

“Yes, you’ve said as much before,” Leia says. “But --”

“An’ it helped that they thought I was in the market to buy from ‘em,” Han says. “Throwin’ around credits like they didn’t matter, askin’ around about how the systems work here, who’s in charge, who has the most power. That sort’a thing.” He looks her in the eye, serious in a way he rarely is. “I know what I’m doin’, y’know.”

Leia opens her mouth to respond, to comfort his bruised ego that yes, she knows he knows what he’s doing, and that he’s good at it, to boot, but the words catch in her through when she feels ... _something._ As strong as a hand gripping her arm, the power of it pulsing through her. She looks at Han, curious, but sees nothing in his expression, his sabacc-face too practiced and proficient for her to read beyond recognizing it for what it is, so she dips lower, her consciousness dragging across the surface of the Force, letting it ride the motion of her curiosity, following the grip she felt, the surge of energy she sensed in Han. She finds loathing and disgust surrounding Han’s heart like a fog, a flash of memory darting past her mind’s eye: two human women, eyes downcast and clothes ragged, their wrists bound, arms held at an awkward angle, allowing them to hold hands, their grip on each other tight enough to hurt. She sees Han touching them, his index finger pressed under the chin of the taller woman, compelling her to look up, to meet his eyes. She sees strength and defiance in the woman’s expression, mingled with animal fear and survival instinct. A lascivious grin on the face of the Weerzin trader behind Han, a snickered warning to be careful, not to get bitten.

“You bought from them,” she says, the words choked in her throat. “Slaves. You bought two of their slaves.”

Surprise ripples through Han’s system, as clear as a blinding beam of light, for all that his expression doesn’t change. He looks away from her, out into the darkness at the far end of their flat, his index finger tapping against the side of his mug.

“Had to make it look real,” he says eventually. “Got us the intel we needed, as a result.”

“And the women? What did you --”

“Left ‘em with their keepers for the night,” Han says. “‘S how they do it, make the sale, then make you wait to collect. Good way to keep you comin’ back, make you buy more the next day if they can sweeten the deal enough. Gives ‘em some time to see what dirt they can pull up on you, too, make sure you ain’t got a reputation for doin’ fast business or gettin’ too friendly with the authorities.”

Leia laces her fingers together, resting her hands in her lap where she hopes Han won’t notice them shaking. “Will you?” she says. “Buy more tomorrow?”

Han shrugs. “Probably.”

“And then?”

“Then put ‘em on a ship to the nearest Alliance outpost, ‘less you’ve got an objection to that,” he says, his tone rising, defensive. “Look, you know how I feel about all this. Ain’t makin’ it any easier, you actin’ like I’m some kind’a --”

“No, it’s -- Han, it’s _brilliant,”_ Leia tells him, her words bringing him up short, his confusion coming through his cavalier affect, finally, mouth half-open on his truncated complaints. “It never would have _occurred_ to me -- or to Luke -- to do what you’ve done.”

“That’s naivete for you,” Han grumbles. “Thought _you’d_ put together eventually that we’d have to get in and get our hands dirty if we’re gonna do this. Ain’t any nice way to bring about a coup. And no, ‘course it didn’t occur to Luke, I’m always _tellin’_ you I’m smarter’n him by half, at least.” He gestures at her with his mug. “Not usually more’n half as smart as you, though.”

He’s got a cautious smile on his face as he says it, warming a bit when Leia answers him with a quiet laugh. “You’re giving me too much credit,” she says, “and Luke not nearly enough.”

“Be more likely to give him more if he were _here,”_ Han says, looking around once again. “Goin’ off every day to spend time with his Jedi buddy, leavin’ us to run his revolution for him. It ain’t like him, and I don’t like it.”

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Leia says, “but I’d like to hear them, as I’m sure you would. I’ll ask him tomorrow before he leaves, share with him the progress we’ve made. That might help him come around.”

“Come around from _what,”_ Han says, but it’s a rhetorical question, not something Leia’s interested in considering too deeply, let alone answer, so she leaves it to hang unanswered between them, focusing instead on the work in front of her.

She’s exhausted, both mentally and physically, when she finally gives up for the night and crawls into bed, Luke absent still and Han stumbling a little over his own feet as he joins her, his drinking over the course of the day leaving him with a hangover she hardly needs the Force to sense. He kisses her when they lie down together, though, a good, slow, _honest_ kiss, and she wraps her hand around the back of his neck and squeezes the tight muscles there in answer, massaging away his discomfort as best she can until sleep claims her, dragging her under like a tide, Han’s pleasure at her touch fuzzing the edges of her consciousness, soothing her.

She dreams.

A woman she doesn’t recognize lies at her side on a blanket, the gentle warmth of a late afternoon breeze ruffling the cloth of her dress, a single tendril of light brown hair fluttering against her bared shoulder. Leia reaches out with a hand that is not her own and touches the tight curve of the woman’s belly, feeling the brightness of life itself beneath her fingertips, moving almost imperceptibly behind skin stretched tight, cradling a beloved child not yet born.

 _So much like you,_ the woman says, her voice as fragile as an egg’s shell.

Yes, Leia answers, only her voice isn’t her own, it’s a man’s voice, Luke’s, she thinks, his hand resting atop hers. He laces his fingers with hers and presses down, the delicate fabric creasing beneath their joined fingers, their hands pushing hard enough that the woman cries out in pain, fear and anger and betrayal thick in the air around them. Leia tries to pull her hand free, tries to wrench Luke away from the woman, away from the damage he’s causing, but she can’t move, her body locked away in restraints, the day bleeding red before her eyes, going dim in the curls of black smoke. She fights him with every fiber of strength in her for the agonizing seconds it takes her to wake, disoriented and terrified and trapped, the remnants of the nightmare vivid enough that panics when she wakes to hands on her shoulders, pinning her to the mattress.

Terrified, she reaches for the Force, desperate for strength greater than that of her physical body, desperate to find the woman from the dream, to protect her from harm, to love her and shelter her and steal her away, and it’s likely only a few seconds before Han’s voice cuts through her panic and grounds her in reality, but it feels like far longer, his hands digging into the muscles of her shoulders and his hip pressed against her thigh, effectively trapping her under his greater weight.

“You back with me yet?” he says when she looks up at him and says his name, his expression dark with concern she can feel coming off of him like the heat of his body, aching deep in the core of his being. She nods, swallowing where her throat is dry, and he relents immediately, helping her sit up but keeping his hands on her, rubbing fretfully where he’d been gripping her before. “Ten hells. Must’a been a bad one.”

Leia breathes out a shaky laugh. “I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah, well. You reacted pretty bad to this one,” Han says. “Thought we were bein’ attacked when I first woke up, you were makin’ so much noise.”

“Sorry.”

Han snorts. “Ain’t anything to be sorry for,” he says. “You’n Luke have seen me through some bad ones, before. Side effect’a playin’ savior to the galaxy, I guess.” He moves his hand higher, curling a stray lock of her hair behind her ear, tracing the line of her neck down to the curve of her shoulder. “Want a shot to help you sleep? Always helps me when I’m havin’ trouble.”

Leia thinks of Luke’s warnings against drinking, ominous but vague, and starts to say, “No, thank you, I should --” but she cuts herself off and sighs, looking around the room, the vague shapes in the darkness of furniture and appliances, the far side of the bed empty where Luke’s not joined them, despite the lateness of the hour. Thinks on the prospect of going back to sleep and seeing the same nightmare again, an icy shiver piercing through her despite the warmth of Han’s palm against her arm a welcome contrast, and she says, “Yes, actually, I would. Please.”

Han gives her shoulder a squeeze. “Comin’ right up,” he says.

He switches on the glowbulb by the bed on his way into the kitchen, bathing the room in light bright enough to make her blink as her eyes adjust, comes back with a generous shot in one of Luke’s teacups, not the right sort of thing for drinking hard liquor, but better than drinking straight from the bottle. He sits on the edge of the bed while she takes the shot, splitting it in two mouthfuls, the strong liquor making her shudder as it burns down her throat, Han’s hand warm on her knee, idly stroking her through the blankets.

“What?” she says when she hands the cup back and finds him staring at her, his brow creased and mouth tight in a thin line.

“Just worried about you,” he says. He takes the cup and stands, taking one step towards the door before stopping. “And --” He breathes out on a harsh sigh, gesturing with his free hand before letting it drop to his thigh. “Look. You know I don’t really ... hold with Luke’s beliefs about the Force,” he says, “but, ah. Can you tell if he’s okay? Not gotten himself into any trouble?”

Leia’s heart stutters in her chest. “I can try,” she says. “Why?”

Han shrugs, trying for an affect of nonchalance and missing it by a sizeable margin. “You were sayin’ his name in your sleep,” he says. “Sounded worried.”

She suppresses a shiver at the memory of Luke’s hand pushing hers into the woman’s belly, crushing her unborn child with unnatural strength, and closes her eyes, reaching out along the jagged lines of disquiet for the Luke she knows, the Luke she loves, feeling for him, for the warmth of his presence in the Force. Hyperalert as her senses are, she can _tell_ when he lowers his shielding and reaches back for her, feels his shields sliding down like his tunic down his arms at the end of the day, concern and affection and comfort wrapping around her, curiosity touching lightly against her mind, little more than a breath across her thoughts. Acceptance and warmth when she pushes him away from the memory of her nightmare, his shields separating them once more, leaving her alone and bereft, chilled as she opens her eyes and looks up at Han, taking in the concern creasing his brow, the lines around his eyes.

“He’s fine,” she says. “Close by. I assume he’s with his Jedi friend.”

“Right. Thanks for, uh. For checkin’ in on him.”

A smile tugs itself across her mouth, Han’s discomfort with the Force as awkward and endearing as ever. She yawns, lifting her hand to cover her mouth only as an afterthought. “I think the alcohol may be starting to take effect,” she says, lying back.

“Should be,” Han says. He leaves her long enough to set the cup down, pulling her close when he joins her once again in bed. “We can leave the light on, if it’ll help.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Leia says, but Han leaves the light on all the same, the glow of it dulled under the light seeping around the heavy curtains when she wakes hours later, Han gone from her side and Luke seated at the edge of the bed, one hand stroking the length of her upper arm, gentle and soothing.

“Good morning,” he says, his tone soft like he's not sure she's actually woken.

“Good morning,” she echoes. “You were out late last night.”

Luke nods. “I was. I’m sorry I wasn’t here. You had a bad night.”

“No worse than others I’d had before this one,” she says. “Have you talked to Han?”

“Only briefly. He said you’d fill me in on yesterday’s developments?”

Taking the coward’s route, then, leaving her the discomfort of explaining to Luke Han’s methods for intel-gathering, a tactic Leia is almost certain Han would defend, citing her superior verbal skills and greater patience for explaining things, prettying them up, as his reasoning, but at its core, he’s run away and left her holding the bag. It’s not something she’s eager to do, given Luke’s recent tendencies to be distant and his persistent ignorance of galactic political history, so she answers Luke’s inquisitive gaze by pushing back the blanket covering her legs and climbing from the bed, stretching the tension of sleep from her body, indulging in Luke’s gaze resting on her like a physical presence as she does, the comfort of him nearby, calm and still as a pool of water instead of buzzing with energy, constantly anxious to leave as he’s been over the past weeks.

“Let me wash my face,” she says, “then I'll catch you up.”

She takes her time in the ‘fresher, mulling over the different approaches she could take to telling Luke that their lover has purchased slaves, settling finally on a brief but pointed overview of Han’s operation at Chewbacca’s side on Kashyyyk, of the role he adopted as a slaver, allowing him to relocate enough wookiees off-planet to give them a fair fight for their homeworld. She tells Luke all about the risks Han took in doing what he did, the struggles he and Chewbacca overcame, the eventual victory they won solidifying Han as a hero in the eyes of Chewbacca’s clan, at least, and several neighboring clans as well, a feat previously unthinkable among the proud Wookiee race. Luke listens with the eager sort of fascination he tends to have where Han’s exploits are concerned, the adventure-thirsty young man not yet battered by the realities of war peeking out through his world-weariness, blue eyes bright as she repeats the best part of Han’s stories as best she can, using Han’s own words, playing up his role of hero, savior.

“Naturally, he made enemies along the way,” she says, once she’s run out of tall tales to relate, “and he was smart enough to know that he had the potential to make more, especially among the upper echelons of the Empire, if he were to make too big a show of his involvement, so it’s not a story widely known. I studied the liberation of Kashyyyk in some depth in school and never heard mention of him, or of any efforts by non-wookiees, for that matter. He did well to keep a low profile. In that instance, anyway.”

Luke snorts softly, fondly, tracing the tip of his index finger along a long scratch that arches across the duraplast tabletop in front of him, a scar left behind from the flat’s previous resident. “I think there’s a lot he’s done that he’s managed to keep out of the spotlight,” he says.

Leia laces her fingers together. “And not always for good reason, I’m sure” she says. “That’s a nice segue into what we need to talk about, though. Han -- contributed to our cause yesterday, in his own way. He’s begun moving among the locals, gathering information. Good information, the sort of thing we’ll not find listening in on comm chatter. But --”

“-- he’s buying slaves in order to get that information,” Luke says.

“Yes, he is,” Leia says, surprised. “How --”

Luke shakes his head. “You wouldn’t’ve told me about what he did on Kashyyyk if he weren’t doing it again here,” he says. “I was just guessing, from that.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t seem upset about it,” Luke says, cocking his head at her, “but you’re expecting me to be. Upset about it.”

“It’s hardly a tactic we’ve discussed,” she says, “and it’s a sore topic for all of us, for different reasons. I’m not surprised Han didn’t tell you himself this morning. He was hesitant to tell me about it yesterday. I don’t think he would have, had I not pressed him.”

Luke wrinkles his nose. “I don’t see why not. He’s the last person I can imagine wanting to own another sentient.”

“Yes, but you saw how Chewbacca reacted when he thought Han had purchased us,” Leia says. “And now that he’s _actually_ purchased a pair of humans, he’s understandably uncomfortable.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense, I guess,” Luke says. “What will he do now that he’s made a purchase? We don’t have room here to shelter anyone, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be safe, involving them in our plans, for a couple of different reasons.”

Leia lifts an eyebrow at him, surprised to see him thinking strategically for once, not just jumping blindly with both feet into whatever rescue mission or heroic adventure presents itself to him. “No,” she agrees. “He said he planned to arrange transport to the nearest Alliance outpost, but I doubt he’s made any progress in that area. I was thinking to alert the leadership stationed on a few of the nearest planets, see if they could coordinate efforts to return the enslaved to their homeworlds, or to a world where they’ll be safe, if returning where they were taken from isn’t a viable option.”

“Yet,” Luke says, his tone so earnest and honest that Leia has to make conscious effort not to let her amusement at his enthusiasm show.

“One revolution at a time, please,” she tells him. “Anyway, that’s where we stand now, Han and myself. What have you been up to over the past week? Anything new we should know about?”

Luke looks down at his hands, tracing the scratch in the tabletop once again. “I’ve been training with the Jedi,” he says. “He’s been teaching me the things Yoda -- _Master_ Yoda -- didn't have a chance to show me before his passing. All things I -- we -- think I’ll need here, once we put our plans into action.”

“I see,” Leia says. “Things like?”

Luke rests the tip of his middle finger against the dent at the far end of the scratch, worrying the rough edge of it. “Like recognizing a lie before it’s been told,” he says, slowly, as if trying to figure out how to explain it. “Using the Force to encourage the truth. Demonstrating the power of the Force without hurting anyone or encouraging retaliation.”

Leia narrows her eyes at him. “That sounds very different from what you’ve told me you were taught on Dagobah.”

Luke nods. “It is,” he says. “And it’s not -- it’s harder than what Yoda taught me, by a lot. I picked up on some of the physical parts of it just from watching Ben use the Force, and Yoda taught me the finer side of it later, helped me improve there, but there’s a philosophical side to it that I wasn’t taught, that never even would have _occurred_ to me, if the Jedi hadn’t pointed it out.”

That doesn’t surprise Leia, Luke’s love of philosophy on par with Han’s love of sobriety and abstinence. “Tell me about it,” she says. “Please.”

Luke pushes himself back from the table, frowning a little as he slouches in his chair, his legs stretched out before him, a posture he’s picked up from Han, for all that Han inhabits it far more naturally than Luke does. “It’s a control technique, kind of,” he says. “The idea is that you have to ... _share_ yourself with the person you’re using it with -- _on_ \-- so that you can balance the good of others with the good of the person, all external to the self. To yourself.” He looks at her sideways, squinting. “That’s how I understand it, anyway. I hope that makes sense.”

“It does,” Leia says, slowly. “An exercise to force objectivity in your decision-making. It’s a common moral trait taught in politics, helping Senators to consider their constituents and opponents without allowing interference from personal belief and bias. But -- what’s to stop you from introducing personal bias into that balance? I know in politics it’s widely recognized that the full removal of bias and perspective is impossible. I would assume the Jedi knew that, and knew that it would be the same for those using the Force.”

She gets a blank look from Luke in answer and swallows a sigh. “Your Jedi friend is teaching you this in preparation for infiltrating the trade networks on Tatooine,” she says. “So -- imagine that you’re standing before a slaver -- Jabba, were he still alive -- and that you’re using this tactic, this … _skill_ you’re learning. What safeguards are there to prevent your personal dislike of him after what he did to Han, what he did to me, from influencing your treatment of him?”

“Oh. That’s what you meant. I asked that, too,” Luke says, brightening a little, “and the answer is _you._ You’re my best safeguard, for that sort of thing. An-- the Jedi has been studying you through the Force. He says you’re more powerful than I am, like I thought you might be. He said that, with a little bit of training, you’ll be able to keep me in check, keep me from doing anything selfish or unbalanced.”

“And if my bias prevents me from being objective?”

Luke shrugs. “Then it does,” he says. “It’s -- it’s not perfect, or pure. Or safe, really, but neither is a blaster or a laser or the teeth and claws and poisons and other defenses naturally occurring in all of the species in the galaxy. This power --” He frowns, turning his hands palm-up, flexing his fingers. “It’s either an evolutionary leftover or a sign of evolutionary advance. No one’s ever come to a definitive answer on that. If you have it, you learn to use it and control it in the way you -- or your society -- deems best, just like how sandcats learn to use their claws or soldiers learn to use blasters. Self-study, reflection, and meditation have always been the Jedi way of striking balance and using the Force safely, but even that has been flawed, ever since the first Jedi order was established. Flawed worse in some ways than the beliefs held by the Sith. And it’s done more damage than they did, in some ways, if you really think about it.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” Leia says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I did, too,” Luke says, “until the Jedi reminded me that the Empire and the Sith _aren’t_ the same thing, never were. They were closely related, but the Empire was _Palpatine’s_ creation, a political power-grab supported by the Sith that spiraled out of control and grew too powerful -- by military standards, unrelated to the Force -- for anyone, even the Jedi, to take apart.”

“Until you came along,” Leia says.

Luke shakes his head. “It didn’t have to be me,” he says. “I’m not special. If I’d failed at Yavin IV, someone else would have eventually succeeded. You, probably, or someone like you.”

“You used the Force, Luke,” Leia says, “to --”

“-- take the shot that murdered over ten _thousand_ innocent sentients and a handful of Imperial officers,” Luke interrupts, his expression deathly serious, almost frightening in its intensity. “That’s all I did, at Yavin. It’s what we meant to do on Endor. Destroy a warship the size of a small moon, killing our enemies, yes, the ones who ordered the strikes, who killed prisoners, who destroyed your homeworld. But the Storm Troopers aboard, the engineers and medics and clerics and navigators, all the individuals who joined with the Empire because they believed in its cause or because they had no other means of survival or improving their lives -- Leia, we _killed_ them. Over ten thousand on the first _Death Star._ Closer to twelve thousand aboard the second _Death Star_ at Endor. And I used the Force to do it because I’d been told it was the right thing to do and didn’t even stop to _consider_ that there might be another way. A more peaceful alternative.”

“They would have destroyed Yavin if you’d not taken that shot and destroyed them,” Leia reminds him, rejection piercing through the back of her mind like a blade, “killing every living creature there, innocent and otherwise. And they’d’ve done the same to Endor’s moon, with all its species who were uninvolved in the conflict, didn’t even know the Empire _existed.”_

“Yes. And they would have destroyed a few other strategic targets as well, after they were done with Endor,” Luke says. “The Jedi was privy to the plans, he know the long-term strategies devised to keep the Empire in power and to strengthen its grip.”

“So --”

“Our victory at Endor stopped it. Broke the cycle,” Luke says. “When the Jedi turned against the Emperor, sacrificing himself to save me, to save us, he saved everyone aboard the _Death Star_ as well as all of our allies on the ground. He showed our people _and_ his the mercy he’d never been shown, that you weren’t shown, that my aunt and uncle weren’t shown, and he made sure that they knew it and that I knew it, so I could tell the others, so that it could be communicated to the Imperial officers and workers aboard the _Death Star_ that the Alliance had compromised with the Empire. That they were being spared death on the battlefield because of _peace.”_

Leia looks away from the intensity of Luke’s gaze, her eyes going unfocused as she processes what he’s said. “And you believe this will change the way the galaxy views us,” she says slowly, “or the Empire?”

Luke shakes his head. “No. But it _is_ a good -- a framework that makes sense, to me. A good guide for my meditations, and for crafting our strategies here.”

Leia’s mind flashes with the childish urge to gather her notes to her chest, defensive and territorial in a way she’d thought she’d outgrown before her second year on Coruscant. She laces her fingers together instead, tapping her right thumb against the left. “It might be helpful for you to familiarize yourself with our strategies,” she says. “Perhaps help with the planning before suggesting any changes.”

“I wasn’t going to suggest changes,” Luke tells her. “I _am_ interested in seeing what you’ve come up with, though.”

“Of course,” Leia says. “I’ve been wanting to discuss them with you, hear your thoughts. It’s been difficult to catch you, lately.”

Luke offers her a cautiously lopsided smile. “You’d be complaining about me being underfoot if I were around,” he says.

“Only if you were _actually_ underfoot,” she counters, for all that he’s probably right, his tendency to be a distraction when she’s trying to concentrate something of a cornerstone in their relationship.

She spends the better part of the morning explaining her strategies and rationale to Luke, working in some of the information he offers that he knows either from growing up on Tatooine or from the months they spent there together, she doesn’t care to know which. The tension she’s grown grudgingly accustomed to sensing in him creeps in along the edges of his being as they work, fully restored by the time Han joins them in the late afternoon, drunk once again and bleeding from his temple and _laughing_ about it, waving away their concern with all the sincerity of a man basking in the attention and concern of his lovers.

“Should’a been an actor,” he says as he pulls a sterile patch from their first aid kit and wipes away the blood, revealing the scratch along his hairline to be considerably smaller than the amount of blood mingling with the sweat on his face would have suggested it to be. “I’d be just as broke as I am now, but at least I’d be broke somewhere better’n Tatooine.”

He tips his head to the side and treats Luke to a wolfish grin that Luke answers with look of bemusement, putting something of a damper on Han’s self-satisfied enthusiasm. He tries the grin on Leia next, who crosses her arms over her chest and looks him up and down with a critical eye.

“You’re hardly good-looking enough to be an actor,” she tells him.

Han snorts, dismissing the insult with all the attention it deserves, which isn’t much. “I’m the best-lookin’ guy you know,” he says. He jerks his head in Luke’s direction. _“Including_ baby-face over here.”

 _“Hey,”_ Luke complains.

Han puts up both hands. “Just callin’ ‘em like I see ‘em,” he says. “And ‘sides, it ain’t just my looks you two should be appreciating. I just acquired not two, not four, not _ten_ slaves, but an entire shipment of ‘em. Two hundred-odd, from the inventory, and I got to kill three’a the pieces’a shit who were sellin’ ‘em, to boot.”

Leia feels her eyes go wide, eyelids stretching painfully in shock. “You _what?”_

“Killed three mid-level negotiators, took their inventory. All as legit and above-board as you can get on this god-forsaken planet, too. They were plannin’ to take me out, and I drew faster. Made it look like a turf scrabble, no questions asked after I paid off what passes for local authority around here, all blind eyes turned to the whole thing.”

“And the ... _individuals_ you acquired?” Leia says.

“All accounted for. All from here, too, which makes our job puttin’ ‘em back where they came from a helluva lot easier. They’re Outlands folk, mostly. Runaways, debtors, handful’a brave souls who were dumb enough to defy the Hutts.” He shrugs. “Should be easy enough to return all of ‘em home, ‘long as we’ve got a plan to keep ‘em from gettin’ picked up again. And that’s mostly just the runaways I’m thinkin’ about. We’re the ones collectin’ on debts now, since you get debt along with the debtor, so that’s squared away, dead and buried. Won’t report on the band’a rebels to the Hutts, either, and none of ‘em are big-ticket enough to warrant a bounty so it ain’t like anyone’ll come lookin’ for them. And runaways --”

“They won’t do it again,” Luke says, “not after this.” He looks from Han to Leia and back again, his expression twisting the way it does whenever they don’t pick up quickly enough on something he seems to think is obvious. “Getting nabbed by slavers is one of the biggest fears here,” he explains. “If you run away -- or even just wander too far away -- from home, chances are really good you’ll never get to come back. It’s what keeps most kids here in line.” He lifts his hand to his mouth, chewing at the edge of a nail. “Our runaways are lucky you’re the one who picked them up. _Incredibly_ lucky.”

Han reaches up to dab at the blood gathered once again at his temple, shaking his head as he does. “That’s an optimistic way to look at things,” he says. “Don’t want to go puttin’ a damper on it, but we’re gonna need to know who we’re settin’ free, though, before we go breakin’ any chains. Pretty sure it’s a long-shot, but if there’s a spy among our group, someone who thinks they can get in easy with the Hutts if they tell ‘em what we’re doin’, that’ll cause us a headache for all of us that I don’t even want to _think_ about surviving.”

“There’s an Alliance protocol for that,” Leia says, reaching for her datapad, but Luke says: “We can help with that, me and the Jedi. If you’d like us to.”

Leia doesn’t need to look at Han to feel his surprise, mirroring hers. “You’re sure?” she says. “That it will work?”

Luke nods. “Not if I were doing it alone, but if I have him guiding me, then --”

“And you’re sure that’s a good idea,” she says.

“Yes. Why wouldn’t it be?”

A dozen reasons come to mind. Leia pushes them aside. “We need to coordinate our efforts,” she says, reaching once again for her datapad. “Infiltrating the market brings a level of visibility to our operations for which we need to be prepared. Especially once things begin to escalate.”

“I’m all ears,” Han drawls.

Which means he’s arguing with her not two minutes into the discussion, Luke sitting by watching them quarrel without jumping in, his affect of Jedi calm more grating than usual as Leia’s temper climbs, her head throbbing and energy completely depleted by the time they’ve got a passable short-term strategy nailed down. She waits until Han’s stomped off to the ‘fresher before letting any of her exhaustion show, crossing her arms before her on the table and dropping her forehead to rest on them, breathing deeply through the effort she’s poured into _not_ punching Han through a wall.

“I may kill him,” she informs Luke without lifting her head. “And if I do, he will undoubtedly _deserve it.”_

Luke hums softly, the sound non-committal, but he’s laughing when she lifts her head to glare at him, his eyes warm with it, creased at the corners. “I don’t think you’d ever _actually_ hurt each other,” he says, “but if it comes to that, I’ll have your alibi ready.”

Leia snorts, the sound gratifyingly unladylike in the closeness of the room, and drops her head back down to her arms, not budging from that position until she hears the ‘fresher stop, bracing herself for whatever mood Han decides to be in when he comes out.

He’s better-behaved for the rest of the evening than she’s expecting him to be, though she suspects it’s more Luke’s continued presence helping to tame his manners than anything else, Luke sticking around for the evening meal, joining Leia for her meditations after, coming to bed with both of them when the suns have fully set. He’s there when the nightmares bring Leia gasping to wakefulness in the middle of the night, there when she wakes in the morning. He offers her an awkward, shy smile when she rolls over and makes eye contact with him, slow with sleep but awake enough to tell that he’s been awake longer than she has but kept where he is by Han’s loose embrace, one of his hands in Han’s hair, stilled but obviously arrested mid-stroke, a rare gesture of physical tenderness for him, his nonverbal affections usually reserved for her, occasionally for Chewbacca. 

She’s expecting him to leave them once Han’s woken and gone off to drink and gamble his day away, expecting him to return to his Jedi’s ship as he’s done all the days before, but he doesn’t, sticking around and going through meditations with her, then going through his own exercises, leaving her to work in peace. He’s worried about something, she can tell even without her heightened sense of him during their shared meditations, anxious in a way he’s not been since the precious few hours they were together before he left her on Endor, the tension they’ve all worn like a second skin since arriving on Tatooine hotter and more electric on his skin than it’s been, seeping through even his most concentrated attempts to hide it from her, to pass any kind of credibility to his repeated insistence that he’s fine.

“You’re not,” she says once she’s become frustrated enough to try to get a read on him through the Force and fails almost laughably within seconds, Luke’s shielding technique worlds stronger than anything he’s yet taught her to do.

“You’re worrying too much,” he tells her, unfazed when she crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him.

“Worry has saved my life and the lives of those around me more times than I care to count,” she counters. She cocks her head at him, watching him struggle not to squirm under her scrutiny. “I’d think you would trust me enough to tell me your thoughts by now. Let me help, if I can.”

It’s an underhanded trick, a guilt-trip in its purest form, but it works, Luke’s expression crumbling before her eyes. He looks away from her, fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve for a moment before speaking. “It’s finally starting to feel real,” he says, finally, “the work we’re doing here. Han’s work, your strategies. Using the Force to make sure we’re not walking into a trap. We’re anxious about it, the Jedi and I. That’s all.”

“Because of his condition, or because of his ... prior allegiances?” Leia asks.

“His condition, mostly,” Luke says. “And using the Force, in small part. It’s been decades since he used it freely, without the threat of the Emperor’s disapproval.”

“And you’re sure you need his help with this? That it’s not something you could do on your own, or that I could -- I don’t know, help you do?”

Luke shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t know how to teach you the technique we’ll be using, not fully and not fast enough. Wouldn’t even know where to start. And it’s a good first -- introduction, I guess, for the Jedi. Helping him regain confidence in himself.”

“If you’re sure,” Leia says.

“I am,” Luke tells her. It sounds like a lie.

“We _do_ have other options, if you change your mind,” she reminds him.

He dips his chin in a single nod. “I know,” he says. “Thanks.”

She’s not expecting him to relent and doesn’t bring it up again, instead preparing to offer him help transporting his Jedi safely to the compound where the captured have been kept, arranging perhaps a meeting place well outside of their town, but Luke surprises her late in the afternoon the day following by returning to their flat to report that he and his Jedi have spent the day sensing the prisoners through the Force, searching them for any signs of violent intent or subterfuge, and have found nothing, all of them frightened, none of them willing to trust that Han is going to do anything but hurt them, but none of them harboring any ulterior motives, nothing beyond surviving and, if possible, not suffering more than they already have.

“They’re all so scared,” he tells her, his voice gentle as if he thinks Han, lounging not far from them, will be as horrified as he _should be_ at the impression he’s made. “Han has been very convincing.”

“Told’ya, should’a been an actor,” Han says, looking smug.

“You’re doing more good as a smuggler,” Luke counters, so sincere that it brings Han up short, his self-satisfied affect crumbling a little.

“We’ll begin our relocation efforts tomorrow, then?” Leia says, coming to Han’s rescue.

Luke nods. “I don’t see any reason not to. The sooner we can return them to their lives, the better.”

“Ain’t much of a life to return to in some’a their cases,” Han says.

“Not yet, no,” Luke says. “But it’s better than what they think you have in store for them.”

Han shrugs and lets the conversation drop, tipping his head back and closing his eyes in an act of boredom that wouldn’t fool either Leia or Luke even without the Force helping them see past it, but they allow it by unspoken agreement, Luke going over to his favorite meditation spot in the corner and folding himself up into an unreadable statue, Leia returning her attention to reporting their progress to her Alliance contacts.

They begin their relocation efforts the following day, Han standing guard while Luke and Leia work directly with the prisoners, explaining their initiative and Han’s role in it, arranging transport for them in groups small enough to not attract attention from anyone who might be watching, curious about the newest buyer’s next steps. It’s good work, but exhausting, growing moreso with each day that passes, the long hours keeping Luke from visiting his Jedi, which has him anxious starting on the second day, growing worse as the days pass with him a constant at Leia’s side.

“I can handle it on my own today,” she tells him on the fourth day, weary even before the first sun has more than peeked over the horizon, the weight of the nightmares she’s been having more and more often mixing with the brittle tension she can sense in Luke, wearing on her like an ill-fitting garment. “Go see him. I can tell you’re worried about him.”

But Luke shakes his head, offering her a look that he probably thinks is a reassuring smile. “I’ve been checking in on him, and he on us, while we’ve been working,” he says.

“Is everything all right with him?” she asks.

“Yes. Why?”

“You’re acting strangely,” Leia says. “Worried. Is there something I should know about?”

There _is,_ she can tell instantly, but Luke shakes his head again and leans in to kiss her before she can call him on it, the pleading look in his eyes when he pulls away helping his case considerably. She leaves him to his worries in silence during the remainder of their relocation efforts, trying not to think about it too much, knowing that her attentions are needed elsewhere. Endures for a handful of days following, as well, giving Luke some space to come to her about it himself, but when that doesn’t happen, she confronts him once again, without prettying it up this time, her temper flaring when Luke gets out of talking about it _this_ time by physically leaving their rented flat and disappearing into the midnight darkness washed across the dunes, his presence fully shielded from her when she calms herself enough to employ the lessons he’s given her. Her temper, already boiling at the insult of him leaving, fully ignites at the effort she _knows_ he’s putting into hiding himself from her, a greater effort than he needed before he began training her. She curses him under her breath and grabs her cloak and one of Han’s blasters, intent on going out to find Luke and fill his ear, but Han spots her before she’s managed to pull on her boots and puts himself between her and the door, his arms crossed over his chest.

“You know you won’t find him unless he wants to be found,” he says before she’s had the chance to tell him to get out of her way, “and if he gets himself found just ‘cause he’s gotta rescue you from all the deadly shit out there, you’ll never live it down, and we both know it.”

He’s right and she _hates_ it, her skin crawling with the frustration and powerlessness she’s felt more times since she met him and Luke than she ever did in her nineteen years prior. She kicks off her boots and gives Han back his blaster, taking at least some small pleasure in the look of surprise on his face when he realizes she managed to take one of his precious weapons from him without him noticing.

“He’s hiding something,” she snarls, tossing her cloak at the hook on the wall. It catches off-center and hangs crooked, folded over itself like it’s planning something, which bothers her enough that she fixes it, gets it to hang properly. “I can’t tell what it is, but _not_ telling me was important enough for him to run off. Apparently.”

“Yeah, ain’t it funny how bad that feels,” Han says, stretching out in his favored chair and propping his feet up on a crate none of them has yet bothered to unpack. “The two’a you seem to like doing that.”

Leia narrows her eyes at him. “For your information,” she says, “it wasn’t _my_ secret to share that Luke was going off to face Vader on his own. And even if it had been, the night before battle was _hardly_ the time to be placing such a burden on you.”

Han waves his hand. “I’ve toldja before, I don’t need your protection, or Luke’s, or anybody’s,” he says, “never have, never will. Just sayin’ I know how you feel. And yeah, he’s hiding something. Has been for a while. Surprised you didn’t notice ‘til now.”

Punching Han in the face won’t fix anything but Leia’s tempted to do it anyway. “He should know better by now,” she grumbles.

“Luke’s not the fastest learner sometime,” Han says, the affection warming his tone striking at odds with the apprehension Leia can sense from him when her temper settles enough for her to focus and reach out, touching the Force lightly, like the drag of a fingertip across the surface of a pool of water, feeling for Han’s familiar light.

He’s resisting the urge to go out looking for Luke himself, she realizes, his affect of relaxation and unconcern all the more impressive once she’s got the sense of his elevated heart-rate, the tension wound tight up his spine, the energy flowing from him ugly with what-ifs and protective aggression. She closes her eyes and draws a slow breath, flickers of vision flashing behind her eyelids almost instantly as she does, memories not her own of Luke lying motionless in the snow on Hoth, lips blue and cold as Han pressed a kiss to them, tasting blood and ice, fear welling against the bite of snow crystals as Han pulled Luke’s legs over his lap, miserable and vigilante for the long storm stretching across the darkness of night. The vision shifts, memory sliding into fear-soaked conjecture as snow warms into sands gone black-blue under the night sky, radiating heat hoarded during the day, the thick fabric of Luke’s tunic dusted with the coarse grains, a myriad of injuries darting across him: bruises from a Raider’s spear, bites from the venomous wildlife. A blaster-shot from one of the many enemies unseen in the darkness, blood seeping through the thick linens of his tunic, soaking the sand beneath him.

She blinks and the vision’s gone, Han watching her with the same guarded expression he wears whenever Luke’s trying to get a read on him, his brow furrowed in the beginnings of a glare, a warning sign of temper stirring, ready to rise up and strike. Not unreasonable but not needed, either, not when they’re both on-edge with worry, pushing aside righteous irritation with Luke, with his silence, his perpetual belief that he should bear alone the burdens in his life.

 _Come home, Luke,_ Leia projects through the Force, comforting herself by closing the distance between herself and Han, running her fingers through Han’s hair when he tips his head to the side, resting his forehead against her hip, warm through the linen of her trousers. _Please, we’re worried about you. Come back._

She feels Luke’s immediate answer, a comfort like the sensation of his arms wrapped around her in their shared bed, warmth and reassurance projected back to her, the unspoken promise of safety. A fleeting glimpse of night sky, stretched endlessly above a smooth rock, well above the sands. The Force vibrant like a blanket around him, protecting him.

“He’s safe,” Leia says without thinking, the sensation muted at the sound of her voice in the small room.

“‘Course he is,” Han says, tipping his head back to look at her, his mouth slanted in a smile that doesn’t at all reach his eyes. “Wouldn’t’a let him go if I didn’t think he’d be okay.”

Leia rolls her eyes and gives his hair a gentle tug, leaving him to his tough-guy act in favor of retreating to the bedroom to meditate. She intends to stay awake, to wait for Luke to come back so that she can talk to him, get him to tell her what’s going on, but the strain of the past two weeks pull her soundlessly from her exercises into a deep sleep shattered as always by dreams, her mind surfacing to the safety of their flat only when Luke does finally return, the touch of his fingertips against her arm drawing her from the searing heat of nightmare to the cool reality of the bedroom, Han stretched out beside her, wrapped in a blanket and deeply asleep, for all that she didn’t notice him coming to bed. Luke presses a single finger to his lips when she opens her mouth to ask him what time it is, his eyes bright with the same sort of manic energy he had the night before the attack on the first _Death Star,_ and he motions for her to come with him, her outer cloak in his hand already, his cloak still fastened firmly at his throat.

It’s either very early or very late, the air outside their flat sharp with the chill of the desert night, the sky overhead ink-black, pricked through with stars. Leia pulls her cloak tight around her, her skin warm still from sleep and sensitive to the chill as a result, her movements slow and groggy as she follows Luke across the rolling dunes that cradle their settlement, up to a rocky outcropping she recognizes from the flash of insight she took from him after he left that evening. It’s closer than she’d thought it was, earlier, not terribly far from their favored meditation spot and high enough up that she can almost make out the compound housing their flat once she’s reached the top. Luke settles on a flat chunk of sandstone at the far side of the outcropping and folds his legs before him, like a man settling into his favorite easychair, watching with uncharacteristic intensity as Leia sits across from him, mirroring his contemplative pose.

“I’m sorry for leaving like I did last night,” he says straight away, once she’s settled. “I needed to think.”

Half a dozen responses come to mind, none of them what Leia would consider diplomatic, or even polite. She pushes them aside and says, “I see. And what were you thinking about?”

Luke looks down at his hands, rubbing at an imagined streak of dirt on the back of his organic thumb. “I’ve told you before that you’re strong in the Force,” he says, slowly. “I was right about that. More right than I knew. You’re very powerful. It's allowing you to sense things I didn't expect you'd be able to sense. It's making you worry, more than you should.”

“I’m worried about _you,”_ Leia corrects. “Han and I both are. Very much so.”

That gets Luke to lift his chin, looking her in the eye, finally, his expression bleak, almost heartbroken. “I know,” he says. “And I wish you weren’t. I almost wish the two of you you hadn’t come with me to Tatooine, but I’m glad you did, too, and I just --”

Leia reaches out and wraps her hand around his, a shocktide of feeling assaulting her senses as she does, lightning-quick before Luke clamps down on his control, her mind overwhelmed with the potent stink of fear, fear of loss and betrayal, of guilt and rejection. Of exile earned -- _deserved_ \-- painful and devastating because of it. Loneliness seeping in from every angle, cold and dark.

“Sorry,” Luke says, pulling his hand away from her touch.

“You haven’t anything to be sorry for,” Leia says. “Tell me what’s going on. Is it something to do with your Jedi, or what we’re doing here, or -- what?”

Luke swallows. “The Jedi,” he says. “In part.”

“In part,” Leia echoes.

“Yes. And about our father. Yours and mine.”

“My father was, and is, Bail Organa,” Leia says, her tone weary, even to her own ears. She tries for a reassuring smile, her cheeks stiff with it. “I've had enough taken away from me. I don't need that taken away, as well.”

“I'm not trying to take it away from you,” Luke says, “I wouldn’t _want_ to take that away from you, ever. But it _does_ matter that we're -- that your biological father, _our_ biological father, was -- _is_ who he is.”

Leia cocks her head. “How so?” she says. “I have no intention of following your path and becoming a Jedi. I'm far better-suited to politics. It's what I was raised to do.”

“It’s a good path for you,” Luke says. “But you have the same gift I do, that our father does.”

 _“Did,”_ Leia corrects. “Is that -- that can’t be what has you so concerned. Unless you have a moral objection to an untrained Force user operating at the political level, in which case --”

“No, that's not it,” Luke says. “That seems to be -- there’s a historical precedent for that. You wouldn't be the first.”

Leia raises an eyebrow, her curiosity piqued, but instead of letting Luke distract her with his understanding of political history, she says: “Your concerns are ... what, then? We’ve been discreet about our relationship over the years, so it would hardly impact the Alliance if it became known that we’re related. And you can’t _possibly_ be concerned about Han learning the truth. You know how little he'll care, either about who fathered us or that we're biologically related.” She offers Luke a half-smile. “He's never been one to worry about social norms, so long as he’s enjoying himself. As I'm sure you've noticed.”

Luke doesn’t return her smile. “I have,” he says, “and no, he won’t care about us being related, that’s not what -- I hadn’t thought that he would. But he was tortured by Vader on Bespin, Leia. _Horribly_ tortured. I felt it, through the Force, saw it in a vision. He’d be well-within his rights to have ... reservations about associating with me, since I _am_ training to be a Jedi. Learning what our father knows.”

Leia rolls her eyes. _“Knew,”_ she says, “and Han would give up the _Falcon_ before he’d leave you, and we both know it.”

“He --”

“-- is very fond of me,” Leia says, crossing her arms over her chest, “but he _loves_ you, Luke. Has since the first moment I met the two of you. Surely you’ve picked up on that? One hardly needs the Force to see it.”

She’s expecting Luke to blush and try to downplay Han’s affections for him, but instead, he looks across the endless grey of the dunes, his brow furrowed, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “Yes,” he says, “I’m aware of how Han feels about me.”

“It’s hardly one-sided,” Leia puts in.

“No. No, it isn’t. And that’s what frightens me. I don’t want to lose that. Or you.” He looks at her, steady and unblinking, as if doing his best to stare into her soul. “I love you, Leia.”

Leia’s breath catches in her throat, her chest tightening at Luke’s words, so very, _very_ rarely spoken and precious to her for it. She rocks forward on her knees to close the distance between them and cups Luke’s face in her hand, drawing him close for a kiss, hoping the affection and frustration and fear tumbling through her in a confused cacophony will communicate to him what she knows she could never manage in words, the emotions rushing through her like blood echoing Luke’s own struggle, evident to her even through his attempts to shield it away, tangible to her as she kisses him.

“I love you, too,” she tells him when he pulls away from the kiss, the muscles in his jaw flexing under her palm. “Please. Just tell me the truth?”

Luke frowns, his hands moving fretfully where they rest against his knees, as if he’s having a fight with himself and somehow losing. “The Jedi we rescued,” he says, finally, speaking slowly as if he’s not sure still how to put his thoughts into words. “I told you that he was Palpatine’s prisoner, held captive on the _Death Star.”_

“You did.”

“That wasn’t a lie,” Luke says, his tone suddenly -- oddly -- defensive. “It’s not the whole truth, but it’s not a lie, either.”

“All right.”

Luke swallows. “The Jedi we rescued was taken by Palpatine _years_ ago, when he was young, about our age. He was tortured and indoctrinated and subjugated through Palpatine’s superior strength and ability through the Force. And he ... did things, as a result, during those years. Bad things, _terrible_ things, Leia. He believed he was on the right side, the side of good, because that’s what Palpatine had told him, what he told everyone in the Imperial Forces. He _honestly_ believed that he was doing the right thing. It wasn’t until he and I fought and he realized who -- and what -- I am, that he started to -- to come around, to see he’d been misled. To recognize what he’d done, what the Emperor had truly done to him.” He lifts his right hand and flexes it, the whir of the mechanism inside audible in the predawn quiet. “He saved me from the Emperor, when I went to face him on the _Death Star._ When the Emperor tried to do the same to me, to force me to join him. To train in the ways of the Dark Side. I refused, and the Emperor was going to kill me for it. Nearly did. But the Jedi intervened and saved me. Saved my life. Saved everyone on Endor, as well. You and Han. Everyone aboard the _Death Star._ And it nearly cost him his own life in exchange.”

Leia frowns, her mind presenting her with an incomplete picture painted by Luke’s words, the simplicity of it confusing and _wrong,_ somehow. Clearly glossing over something, like the long shadows of twilight concealing secrets across the sand. “You’ve told me that much before,” she says, slowly, her mind moving too quickly for any of her thoughts to take root and solidify for her. “What’s changed?”

“How do you mean?”

“You left last night because you needed to think,” Leia reminds him. “And now you’ve brought me out here to explain things, but so far, you’ve told me nothing I didn’t know already.” She reaches out, taking both of Luke’s hands in her own. “What am I missing, Luke?”

Luke looks down at their joined hands, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the backs of her fingers. “The nightmares,” he says, softly. “They’re starting to show you things that I haven’t told you. I’ve meant to tell you the truth, I swear I have, and the Jedi has -- _encouraged_ me to, as well, but then Han did what he did and we needed to coordinate the relocation, to concentrate on that, and I just didn’t ... I didn’t get around to it. Every night, I’ve gone to sleep wondering if you’d figure it out, if I’d wake up and you’d be -- that you’d leave because of it, because of what I’ve done. That you’d take Han with you and go. And I would deserve it, if you did.”

 _“Luke,”_ Leia says, “there is _nothing_ you could possibly do or say that would make me leave you. Me _or_ Han. I should think you'd know that, after all this time, after everything we’ve been through together.”

“There is, though,” Luke says, carefully twisting his hands out of her grip, “or there might be. I don't know. We’ve never -- the things we’ve been through, the three of us, it’s never -- _I've_ never --” He looks away from her, his entire being tight with fear, like a man facing a firing squad. “I lied to you about the Jedi I -- _we_ \-- rescued on Endor,” he says, finally. “Before we took him in, he was known as Darth Vader. The last of the Jedi, until me. You. _Us.”_ He looks Leia in the eye, deadly serious, as severe as she’s ever seen him before. “Our father is alive, here on Tatooine. He killed the Emperor to save us. To keep us safe from the indoctrination the Emperor used on him. And then we saved him, and brought him here. I lied to you about who he was because I was afraid. I still am. But you need to know, so.”

Everything goes still around Leia, inside her, a cold white noise suffusing the warmth of her body’s heat trapped in the heavy linen of her cloak, and she waits, breathless, for the pain to hit, for shock to give way to agony and adrenaline and fear as it's done the few times she's been physically shot.

Nothing. She looks down, calm as death as she takes in the sight of Luke's hands, folded in fretful stillness between his spread thighs. Not touching her, and therefore not using the Force to draw away whatever emotional response she's certain she _should_ be having to his confession, to the enormity of it, the implications dripping from it like poison.

“I need --” she says, her voice coming thick through the constriction tightening her throat around it. “I need to think. Alone. I’m going -- out. Please do not follow me.”

Luke crumples a little, says her name, but he starts to reach for her as he opens his mouth and the _thought_ of his touch is almost more than she can bear, nausea and fury rising finally like a storm inside her as she wrenches herself to her feet and away from him, keeping him in her sight as she backs down the dunes, unmindful of her footing, the sand slipping treacherously beneath her boots.

She walks through the pain, the flurry of hatred and betrayal and loss engulfing her like flame, the slip and give of the sand beneath her feet makes the going slow and arduous, but she's glad for it, welcomes the exertion, the effort and concentration needed to keep her balance preventing her from sinking fully into the despair Luke’s words have planted in her, the physical demands on her balance keeping her from thinking too hard about anything more than putting one foot in front of the other, the warmth generated under her cloak helping to chase away the chill of the desert night. 

She's hated the Empire her entire life, from the early days of her childhood when the Empire was little more than the bad guy in the watered-down stories her father told her, in the glossed-over histories she studied in her lessons. Some of her earliest memories are of falling asleep in her mother’s lap, listening to conversations about the Empire that she was far too young to comprehend but could tell were deathly serious, her Force gift likely to blame for her keen sense of the fear among the adults in the room, the hopelessness her parents felt, holding her close and trying desperately to conceive of a way to bring peace and freedom across the galaxy, to make it a better place for her to grow up, to thrive.

Darth Vader took that from her, standing by with his hand tight on her shoulder, bruising her while his Grand Moff murdered her mother and father, murdered every person she’d known growing up, all of the good, peaceful people of Alderaan. Tortured her, both before and after, his awful Interrogator and the push of his mind against hers, sinking tentacles as hot as molten rock into --

Realization hits her like a blaster shot, her body freezing, going tense with it. The nightmares Luke mentioned, steadily worsening since Endor, the sizzling darkness reaching for her whenever her thoughts strayed too closely to memories she’s tried so hard to suppress. The disquiet she’s felt running like water under her skin, breathing against her like a shadow. All of it Vader, the man who took _everything_ from her, her family and her home and her freedom, even the peace she once could find in the depths of her own mind, his filthy greed reaching out and tainting her, causing her suffering even as she supported Luke’s desperation to save him, to protect him. Using her, using her connection to the Alliance, to the men and women he hunted mercilessly, whom he and his Empire slaughtered by the tens of thousands, to survive, to grow strong. To sink his roots into a world as corrupt and awful as Tatooine, its widespread suffering and darkness ideal for a creature as evil as he is seeking to regain his strength, to rebuild the Empire in his own image, untethered now by the Emperor he himself destroyed.

“You will _fail,”_ she breathes into the dry, static air around her, hatred burning in her like the core of a star, hot and painful beneath her breastbone. She doubts he’ll hear her, but it feels good to say the words anyway, like a drink of cool water, her skin hot still under her cloak as she turns and makes her way back to the settlement, back to Luke and Han, her anger clouding her sense of them, making it impossible for her to tell if Han is awake or asleep, to sense if Luke is with him or not, and she doesn’t even attempt to clear her head, to focus as Luke’s taught her to do, the thought of enacting any teaching he’s learnt from Vader more than she can stomach.

She finds Luke meditating in his favored corner of their flat when she comes in, Han lounging in his chair with a cup of kaffin in his hand and worry surrounding him like an electric current, likely brought about by her unusual early-morning absence and Luke’s stony silence, awkward and defensive even to the untrained eye; not yet strange enough for Han to ask about it, but close.

“There she is,” he says, pushing himself up and leaning on his knees. “Where’d you go so early in the --”

“We’re leaving,” Leia says, fumbling with the clasp of her cloak.

Han raises both eyebrows at her. “Leaving?” he echoes. “Goin’ anywhere in particular?”

Leia shakes her head, tossing her cloak at the hook on the wall. “No. We’ll find someplace safe nearby and wait there until Chewbacca can bring the _Falcon_ and get us as far as possible from this gods-forsaken world. We’re not safe here.”

Han pushes himself to his feet, his face twisted in an expression of concern. “You got it. Been waitin’ to hear you say that since before we got here,” he says, setting down his cup and reaching for his commlink.

“Wait,” Luke says from his corner, “don’t --” and Han goes still at the word, arrested in mid-motion, the hand outstretched towards his commlink curling in an unnatural shape, like a spider in the throes of death. “We should talk about this first,” Luke continues, his hand held before him, gently curved, his gaze focused entirely on Han, concentrated. Holding him still, Leia realizes, restraining him without touching him, bending Han to his will just as she’s seen Vader do to his prisoners, and the fury that spirals from her in response is _blinding,_ deafening her to the world around her as she turns to face Luke fully, the sight of him -- so precious to her, so beloved -- tainted so deeply with everything she has hated _her entire life,_ igniting in her a passion unlike any she’s ever felt before.

“Let him _go,”_ she snarls, slicing her hand through the air as she does, a physical outlet for the tension building inside her bones and muscles, her hand catching the air as she moves, controlling the current. Luke’s eyes going wide for the split heartbeat before the motion of her hand physically _throws_ him across the room, his body striking the bundle of dried herbs hung on the far wall with enough force to crush them, their remains fluttering down around him like dust. He wraps his hand around his middle, grasping his ribs, and looks up at her with an expression of hurt and betrayal, maybe a little bit of fear, his breathing audible even across the room.

“What in the name of fuck,” Han wants to know, his confusion and horror reverberating through Leia's mind like the shockwaves of an explosion, her palm tingling still, richly connected to the Force still.

“Don’t touch Han again,” she says without answering Han, watching Luke push himself to his feet, winded but trying to play it off, the flush of his cheeks belying his efforts.

Luke nods, watching her warily. Not afraid of her, but close to it. Alert like an animal facing a predator.

“I won’t,” he says. “Calm down. Control it, don’t let it control you.”

“I’m very calm, thank you,” she says. “And I’m in full control, unlike you.”

 _That_ gets her a genuine reaction, Luke’s mouth twisting in confusion, his brow furrowed. “What do you --”

“He’s been manipulating you, Luke,” Leia says. “I should have known. The way you’ve been acting since you _rescued_ him, paranoid and nervous, not trusting me or Han. He’s been plying you, gaining your trust, using it against you, against us.”

“Who has?” Han says, at her back.

“Vader,” Leia spits, the name like blood in her mouth. “Luke’s rescued Jedi is Darth Vader. Alive, here on Tatooine.”

_“What?”_

“He hasn’t,” Luke says, stretching out his hand towards Han, a common conciliatory gesture Leia’s seen him make a thousand times in the face of Han’s temper, now turned threatening to her elevated senses, adrenaline flowing through her like lightning. She can _see_ him pushed against the wall, pinned, seconds before his body moves, feet skidding across the worn carpet laid across the far side of the room, his back impacting the wall with considerably less force than it did the first time, but enough that it audibly knocks the breath from him. “Leia. Trust me, _please.”_

“I do,” she says, but she doesn’t loosen her grip on him, the Force flowing around her with ugly energy, all of the power she’s lacked throughout her life suddenly lying open at her fingertips, hers to freely use. “I trust you with my life. But I _don’t_ trust Vader, nor do I trust what he’s been doing to you. We’re leaving Tatooine and getting you as far away from him as we can. For your sake, and for ours.”

“We can’t leave,” Luke says, “not now that we’ve started what we’ve started. And he could find us through the Force if he wanted to, even if we were to go. There is no distance in the Force.”

“Then we kill him and stick around here ‘til we’ve done what we came here to do,” Han says. “Been wantin’ to put a hole through his head for years now, didn’t think I’d be the one to get to do it.” He looks at Leia, wary. “Unless you’d rather have the honor.”

“I don’t care who does it,” Leia says. “I just want it done. It’s long overdue.”

Han snorts a mirthless laugh and reaches once again for his commlink, picking it up without interference from Luke this time and shoving it into his belt, his blaster next. “You gonna keep Luke pinned up like a bug ‘til I get back, then?” he says, “or ...?”

Leia looks at Luke, his body held unnaturally still against the clay wall of their flat, his mouth pressed in a thin line. “If I have to, yes.”

“All right. She have to keep you pinned up like that, kid?” Han says, turning to Luke.

Luke doesn’t blink. “No,” he says.

“You’re not gonna come runnin’ after me and do somethin’ stupid?” Han says.

“No.”

“You’re sure.”

Luke dips his head in a nod. “I am.”

Han looks from him to Leia and back again, wariness growing like a storm around him. “Just like that,” he says.

Luke doesn’t answer him, stubbornly silent and unreadable even when Han presses him, trying to taunt him into a temper to make him speak his mind. He stays where he is, too, until Han’s left their flat, only stepping away from the wall once the door has closed behind Han, shaking off Leia’s attempts at restraining him as if he’d been standing there by choice, meeting Leia’s attempts to restrain him once more with a gesture that pushes her hands askew; a warning, demonstrating his greater strength.

“I was right to be worried,” he says, the words tired, worn.

“And I was right to be suspicious,” Leia says.

“I _told_ you, he’s not --”

“Yes, he is. And the fact that you can’t see that is _precisely_ what has me so concerned.”

Luke looks away, running his fingers through his hair, an angry, nervous gesture she’s seen before, usually before he does something rash and stupid. “I know it’s similar,” he says, after a long, tense moment. “We talked about it. About how he fell from the Jedi path. Turned to the Dark Side. How he came back to the Light. How -- how my fall was similar, but not the same.”

Leia’s blood goes cold. “Your fall?” she echoes.

“Yes. On board the _Death Star,_ when the Emperor was taunting me. Threatening the Alliance, and you, and Han. I turned to the Dark Side. I thought it would be the only way I’d have the power to kill them. Vader and the Emperor. To save everyone I cared about.”

“I don’t see how that’s in any way similar to the atrocities Darth Vader committed when he turned,” Leia says. “Did you kill or harm _anyone_ while you were aboard the _Death Star?_ You said it was Vader who killed the Emperor.”

“It was,” Luke says, “but that’s not -- it’s not so much what you _do,_ it’s the motivation behind your actions that defines a Jedi’s allegiance. A willingness to turn in a time of desperation is no less a crime than --”

“Darth Vader murdered our mother, murdered countless Jedi, murdered _children_ sent to Coruscant to train in the ways of the Jedi,” Leia snaps. “He destroyed my homeworld, murdered your aunt and uncle and Obi-wan, and would have killed you and me and Han and everyone else we’ve ever known and loved, had you not stopped him. All because he was brainwashed, according to you, according to _him._ And yet you have no reservations about letting him tell you his stories and train you in his footsteps. _Just_ like Palpatine did for him, Luke. Exactly the same.”

“And if I let it turn me, then I’ll be no better than him,” Luke says, “I know. I’ve thought about that, Leia, every day since I brought him with me to Endor. I’m scared that will happen. But I couldn’t -- I keep thinking that, if there’s hope for him, then there’s hope for me. That I might be able to do something _good,_ even though I’m -- even though it’s tempting to give in to the Dark Side. To abuse this power I have.” He crumples, moving over to slump down on the crate by Han’s favorite chair. “I couldn’t just leave him to die because I wouldn’t want that for myself. Or for you, or Ben. Anyone who has our gift.”

 _Our curse,_ Leia thinks. She hesitates, then moves across the room, settling on the edge of Han’s chair. “If it were me,” she says softly, “if I’d been the one who found him. If he’d asked of me what he’s asking of you, and you’d discovered that I was going along with it, what would you do, Luke? Honestly. Would you accept it, trusting that I’d not been ... _affected_ by him, a Sith many times greater in power than you or I on our own, or even both of us combined?”

“I ...” Luke begins, but he stops himself, sighing heavily enough to constitute a full sentence all on its own. “I don’t know,” he says, finally. “I’d like to think that I would, that I’d trust your judgement, but that’s just because that’s what I want you to do, now. If our roles were switched, I think --” He lifts his left hand to his mouth, chewing at one of his nails, a habit she’s watched Han try to tease him out of for years. She leaves him to his silence, waiting with all the patience her teachers on Coruscant told her she’d need someday in her career, her heartbeat marking the seconds as they pass.

“I think I’d want to see him myself,” Luke says, finally, dropping his hand back down to his lap. “Talk to him. Make sure that he didn’t -- that I didn’t sense anything from him. Any ill intent or manipulation. And I’d want to watch you interact with him, see if you were showing signs of being affected.”

Leia suppresses a shudder at the thought of facing the man she sees only in her worst nightmares. “I see,” she says. “Are you suggesting, then, that I go with you to speak with him?”

Luke shakes his head. “No. Yes. If you want to do that, yes. But I don’t want to force you. It’s just what _I_ would want, if our roles were reversed.”

“And if I go with you to meet him,” Leia says, “to talk to him, and I sense _anything_ from him, anything at all that makes me think that he’s manipulating you --”

“Then I’ll trust in your judgement,” Luke says. “I told you, you’re my safeguard. I trust you.”

“And if I decide to kill him?”

“Then I’ll stop you,” Luke says. “And if I can’t, then you’ll kill him.”

It sounds like a promise, not a threat. Leia hesitates, then dips her chin in a nod. “All right. Let me think about it. And -- stay here, today. Please. If you can.”

Luke nods. “I will,” he says. “I’d planned to, actually. If you were all right with me being here.”

Leia pushes herself to her feet, reaching out to touch Luke’s hair, the soft strands bleached bright over the past weeks’ exposure to the suns of his homeworld. “I am very, _very_ angry with you,” she tells him, “but I wouldn’t want you anywhere but here.”

“Thank you,” he says. 

“If there’s anything else, anything you’ve not told me, please tell me now?” she says. “I’m not sure I’m up for any more surprises.”

Luke shakes his head, dislodging her hand from its place in his hair. “There’s nothing else,” he says. “Promise.”

He looks like he’s telling the truth, his expression earnest and sincere, his posture slumped, like a caged animal expecting to be struck. Leia leaves him like that, retreating to the comfort of her notes and strategies, her mind spinning with too many thoughts for her to name any one of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_Author musings:_

I don't know if I love writing plot or hate it. It hurts my head, and it's more complex than smut, takes more out of me, but it’s more gratifying than the smut when it’s finished, nice to see all the pieces I wrote in complete non-order stitched together like a quilt, creating what I think is a coherent narrative. There are large swathes of this story that I do genuinely like and mostly enjoyed writing. Like many of my stories, this one didn’t at all go where I had originally thought it would go, but it was an adventure from start to finish because of it, and I hope you’ve enjoyed taking this walk with me.

Let me know your thoughts on this installment, yeah? I’ve worked it over ‘til I’m cross-eyed, but I think I like what I’ve got.

Also, if you haven’t seen [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXlao2KNYjQ), you are _missing out._ Cracks me up so, so hard. I just hope Mark Hamill’s seen it because _holy shit._


End file.
